At the End of the Stoic Hard Line

Last weekend, my wife, daughter, and I visited friends who had just bought a newly constructed second home in Gloucester, Massachusetts—complete with an ocean view, expansive rooms, and a peaceful, picturesque setting. Touring their lovely home, I kept thinking, This is nice. I want a home like this.

But—amateur philosopher that I am—that thought was immediately followed by another: Why?

Clearly, my brief bout with jealousy revealed something deeper. On some level, I believe owning nice things is better than not owning them—that, in some way, my life would be better—happier—if I possessed certain material goods.

I suspect many of us still subscribe, at least in polite conversation, to the now-clichéd idea that money can’t buy happiness. But do we really believe it? Let’s assume, for the moment, that we do—that the things money can buy aren’t all that important when it comes to a truly happy life. Fair enough.

But does that belief extend to non-material things (many of which are still tied, at least indirectly, to money)? Loving relationships? Personal and professional growth? Good health? A solid education? Surely, at least some of these things are necessary for a happy life—aren’t they?

Not to the Stoics, they aren’t.

And that brings us to what’s sometimes referred to as the Stoic hard line: the idea that nothing external to ourselves is necessary to live a good life. This lies at the heart of what’s known as the Stoic doctrine of indifferents.

This doctrine is no joke—so difficult to internalize that even though I want to, I’m doubtful that I can. You may arrive at a similar conclusion, or perhaps not, but either way, assuming we share more than a passing interest in Stoicism, we owe it to ourselves to give this doctrine a fair hearing, so let’s get into it. Stoic Virtue and Indifferents

In Stoic philosophy, everything in life falls into one of three categories:

– Good: what is virtuous– Bad: what is vicious– Indifferent: everything else

It’s important not to confuse the third category with “indifferent” in the modern, dismissive sense. The Stoics cared deeply about how we live. Their claim, however, was that the only thing that determines whether we are living a good life is whether we are acting in harmony with reason. And that, for the Stoics, is what virtue means. It’s the disciplined, rational mastery of our choices.

The Stoics didn’t view the cardinal virtues of wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance as separate “kinds” of virtue, but as different expressions of a unified rational disposition—a life lived in accordance with nature and reason.

Everything else—health, wealth, reputation, even close relationships—belongs to the category of indifferents. But not all indifferents are treated equally. The Stoics made a crucial distinction between preferred indifferents (like health, education, and friendship) and dispreferred indifferents  (like illness, poverty, and obscurity).

On Stoic theory, we’re not wrong to prefer health over sickness, or safety over danger. In fact, the Stoic sage does exactly that. But here’s the key: we are not to mistake these things for true goods. Our happiness doesn’t depend on getting what we prefer. It depends entirely on how we respond to what happens.

This is why Stoicism places such emphasis on control. The only thing that’s truly up to us is our use of reason—how we interpret events, how we respond, how we choose. Everything else—our body, our reputation, our fortune—is vulnerable to forces beyond our control.

So when the Stoics say external things are “indifferent,” they don’t mean worthless or irrelevant. They mean these things are neither inherently good nor bad, because they lie outside the domain of our character and our choices. And yet, they’re not meaningless. Quite the opposite: they are the raw materials from which we construct our lives. Health, illness, wealth, poverty, reputation, obscurity—these are the circumstances that form the backdrop for every decision we face.

The Dilemma of Preferred Indifferents

One part of me finds the Stoic doctrine of indifferents liberating. If happiness depends only on virtue, then I can remain unshaken by loss, illness, injustice, or failure. Nothing outside myself has the power to make or break my life.

Another part of me, however, finds the concept nearly impossible to live out at an experiential level.  Take health. As a sufferer of chronic pain, I struggle to view this condition as indifferent to my happiness.  Or, when I see images of parents grieving the loss of a child, am I to believe that such a loss does nothing to diminish the happiness of those parents—to say nothing of the happiness of the poor child?

Can you feel my tension? Are the philosophical stakes clear?

Ancient critics, including followers of Aristotle, pushed hard on this dilemma: If externals are truly indifferent, why are some consistently preferred? And if we naturally choose health over illness, friendship over loneliness, or success over failure, doesn’t that imply these things are in some sense good? And if we admit that there is such a thing as external goods, then virtue cannot be the only good—and thus not completely sufficient for happiness.

The Aristotelian tradition rejected the Stoic view outright: external goods were not just useful—they were essential. A flourishing life (eudaimonia) required not only virtue but also the support of things like health, friendship, wealth, and civic participation. These weren’t optional—they were integral to living well.

Cicero, though generally sympathetic to Stoic ethics, voiced doubts about the claim that virtue alone is sufficient for happiness. As Jacob Klein notes, Cicero aligned himself with the Antiochean view, “according to which happiness comes in degrees and may be augmented by external advantages, which constitute genuine goods” (Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 49, 2015).

And most of us today feel the same. We don’t just acknowledge externals—we’re entangled in them. We celebrate when our work is recognized, mourn when we lose someone we love, and worry when our health or status is threatened. These things don’t feel indifferent. They feel decisive.

The Stoics knew this. But they insisted that the quality of our lives lies not in what happens to us, but in how we respond. The events themselves—sickness, loss, praise, pain—are outside our control. Our judgments and choices in response to them are not.

Sitting with the Tension

Still, the question remains: if health, wealth, reputation, and connection are all indifferent, why does the Stoic sage consistently prefer them? Why are we not told to flip a coin or choose at random? And if reason consistently favors one path over another, doesn’t that suggest some kinds of external goods are more valuable than others?

This seems to leave Stoics with an unsolvable dilemma. Either preferred indifferents really are good—either in themselves or as means to some further good—in which case virtue is not the only good and thus not fully sufficient for happiness. Or they are truly indifferent, neither here nor there, and not important in any meaningful way—despite appearing to matter a great deal in real life.

A common rejoinder, both in antiquity and among modern interpreters, is that yes, indifferents may contribute in some sense to our happiness, but their contribution is so minimal compared to the overwhelming importance of virtue that they can be effectively treated as indifferent. It’s like saying that a single drop of honey in a bitter cup doesn’t make the drink sweet. From this perspective, only virtue has true weight; everything else, however pleasant or painful, barely moves the scale.

As for me, I’m not satisfied with this response. It seems like an attempt to explain away the problem rather than grapple with it. I’m not sure the tension can be resolved without either living in cognitive dissonance or letting go of the classical Stoic claim. There may yet be another way—I’ve come across one thought-provoking proposal from philosopher Jacob Klein that offers a more coherent account—but I need more time to fully digest it. That will have to wait for a future post.

For now, I’ll end where I began: with the feeling of tension. On one side, the Stoics offer something powerful—the idea that our happiness doesn’t depend on fortune, that it lies fully within our control. On the other side is the pull of real life, where health, loss, success, and connection seem to matter a great deal. I don’t have a resolution yet. But perhaps the first step is simply to sit with the tension and let it do its work.